Search Results for: Change Management

10 Things a Maintenance Tech Can Do Today to Improve Reliability

As companies around the globe look to improve equipment reliability, I can’t help but think of the Technicians and Craftspeople I meet after conference presentations. As they step up to introduce themselves to comment on the presentation, these attendees will often say, “I really liked your presentation, but I don’t think our management would ever support a program like this. What you are doing makes a lot of sense, but we just don’t have the people and our Operations Managers don’t understand maintenance and reliability.” [Read more…]

by Carl S. Carlson Leave a Comment

FMEA Q and A – Difference Between Controls and Actions

FMEA Q and A

A reader is having difficulty seeing the difference between a detection control and a recommended action, and sees them as interchangeable. This has repercussions for the linkage between the Design FMEA and Design Verification Plan, and is the subject of this FMEA Q and A article.

“The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.”
Thomas Berger [Read more…]

by Carl S. Carlson 5 Comments

Understanding FMEA Recommended Actions – Part 1

Actions Speak Louder than Words

Consider these questions: How many recommendations are needed to address the root cause of a high-risk problem? If the FMEA team is addressing an issue with high-severity and high-occurrence ratings, is it usual to have a single recommended action to reduce risk? Why not? Read on, to learn the essential elements of FMEA recommended actions, and answers to this questions.

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”
Leonardo da Vinci

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by James Kovacevic 1 Comment

83 – People and Leadership with Cliff Williams

People and Leadership with Cliff Williams

There are many things going on in organizations concurrently and they can’t decide everything on an immediate basis. This is something that leads to a lot of clashes and similar problems. Sometimes, you want to do something and you can’t find the necessary resources that you need to do it successfully—even though you know it’s the right thing to do. But you can just take unplanned initiatives because they are always a disaster. Don’t start anything that you have to struggle with later on. Make sure your business processes are in place and make your systems work based on those.
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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Risk Exposure Reduction and Mitigation

Guest Post by Geary Sikich (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Exposure to threats, hazards and risks leads to vulnerabilities that an organization must deal with. Commonly these are addressed via a mitigation process. Once mitigation is accomplished, often times the organization feels that the risk, threat, hazard does not need to be revisited. However, as a result of the mitigation efforts on the part of the organization, the risks, threats, hazards reconfigure and re-emerge in a different form.

In order for mitigation to be successful it has to be a constant and ongoing process that produces a resilience to the negative effects of risks, threats and hazards that are realized. [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Baldrige Criteria Poses Challenges to the Quality Profession

Guest Post by James Kline (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

The title may sound strange given the Baldrige’s origin as the U.S. National Quality Award. Yet, its migration to a Performance Excellence Criteria and the addition of Cyber Security, Innovation, and Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) does pose challenges to the quality profession. This is particularly true since the many of the Baldrige examiners are quality professionals. [Read more…]

by Carl S. Carlson Leave a Comment

Understanding FMEA Controls – Part 2

Problems and Solutions

In this article, we use problems and solutions to learn about FMEA controls. In the intermediate problem, we continue examining the door latch-pin failure of the DC-10 cargo door, as an example to identify FMEA controls. In the advanced problem, we analyze a fictitious FMEA relating to potential safety of someone trying to unjam a snowblower.

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by Doug Plucknette Leave a Comment

Top Down or Bottom Up – The Dilemma of Continuous Improvement

I’m sure you have all heard the phrase I wish I had a nickel for every time someone asked me this question. If you follow LinkedIn at all someone poses this question to anyone willing to answer at least once a day and as a result they get opinions that list the benefits of a Top Down or Bottom Up continuous improvement process. [Read more…]

by Carl S. Carlson 6 Comments

Understanding FMEA Controls – Part 1

Leveraging the Value of Today

A common error in FMEA procedure is to make entries in the Controls column that the FMEA team believes need to be done, but are not currently planned or in place. Why is this error so prevalent? Maybe the question should be why do we limit entries into the prevention or detection control column to actions or methods that are currently planned or in place?

“Never mind your mistakes. One day they will become your most prized possessions.”
Abhijit Naskar

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by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

Driving Performance Outcomes Through Effective Meetings

Understand How Effective Meetings Can Enable Improved Plant Performance

Nothing is worse than being in a meeting that completely wastes your time. Hopefully those meetings have been eliminated as part of the steps to making you, the maintenance professional, more effective. For the meetings that you could not eliminate, the meetings need to be effective, reducing wasted time and delivering benefits to the business.

To make meetings effective, the meetings should follow the 3 phases of effective meetings. The 3 phases ensure that meetings are effective, efficient and everyone knows what they are there to do. Lastly, it ensures that the any actions coming out of the meeting are addressed. [Read more…]

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by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Reliability Engineering and Leadership

Leadership is a difficult term to clearly define. A team leader may have poor or wonderful leadership skills. A product may lead in a market with a broad feature offering, yet not hold a recognized leadership position.

As a reliability engineer, you will find many opportunities to lead. Your ability to provide vision, direction, guidance, and support for a team enables you to affect change and accomplish goals. [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Cascading Effects Ripple Through Organizations Ill Prepared to Deal with Them

Guest Post by Geary Sikich (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

We live in a world of consequences. Everything that we experience is a consequence of some action, decision, reaction and/or choice. For organizations, the consequences of a choice, action, decision and/or reaction can cascade throughout the organization and extend to its “Value Chain” rippling through all the known touchpoints and the as yet, unidentified touchpoints.

Organizations need to understand their strategic, operational and tactical capabilities and capacity to recognize, mitigate and/or capitalize on cascade effects. As a result of the diverse nature of global business operations, geopolitical circumstances, culture, etc., there currently is a standardization gap with regard to how organizations should react to cascade effects. This is partly due to opacity, nonlinearity and insufficient competitive/business intelligence that organizations can draw from. This is not to say that the information does not exist. Rather that it does not exist in a form that is readily recognizable to organizations in most cases. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

79 – How to Get the Most Out of Your PM Program with Ricky Smith

How to Get the Most Out of Your PM Program with Ricky Smith

There are a lot of companies that have their own Preventive Maintenance programs now and only a few of those are good at it. Even though they perform regular preventive maintenance but they never get the desired results. The equipment still fails frequently and they are annoyed by the fact that what they do never works. It is mostly because they do the same routine compliance over and over again without ever trying anything new or at the very least learn about new practices. This is where the Preventive Maintenance fails and companies bear the extra cost of maintenance.
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by Fred Schenkelberg 13 Comments

4 Effective Risk Mitigation Strategies

Identifying risk is an important first step. It is not sufficient though.

Taking steps to deal with risk is an essential step. Knowing about and thinking about risk is not the same as doing something about risk.

Risk will occur. Some good, some bad. Some minor, some catastrophic. Your ability to mitigate risk allows you to proactively acknowledge and accommodate risks. Let’s talk about four different strategies to mitigate risk: avoid, accept, reduce/control, or transfer. [Read more…]

by Carl S. Carlson Leave a Comment

Glossary of FMEA Terms

FMEA

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a method designed to:• Identify and fully understand potential failure modes and their causes, and the effects of failure on the system or end users, for a given product or process.

Identify and fully understand potential failure modes and their causes, and the effects of failure on the system or end users, for a given product or process.• Assess the risk associated with the identified failure modes,
Assess the risk associated with the identified failure modes, effects and causes, and prioritize issues for corrective action.
Identify and carry out corrective actions to address the most serious concerns.

[Read more…]

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